In the making of cigarettes, tobacco from a single source is distributed to a plurality of cigarette-making machines. In one prior art system, tobacco is distributed from a hopper as a wide band on a generally horizontal conveyor belt. A plurality of suction tubes, one for each cigarette-making machine, is arranged adjacent the conveyor belt to draw the individual tobacco feeds from the wide band.
This prior art system operates satisfactorily provided that all the cigarette makers are operational. However, this is an unusual condition, and at least a number of cigarette makers may be inoperational at any one time, due to a variety of factors, so that the individual feeds of tobacco from the belt are not required for the inoperational machines. Nevertheless, the conveyor belt must still run at the same speed to provide the required feed for the operational machines.
Therefore, at any given time, a considerable quantity of tobacco, representing the quantity of feed not fed to the inoperational machines, is required to be recycled to the hopper. It is known that any handling and processing of tobacco causes degradation in the quality of the tobacco, measured in terms of its "filling power" that is, the ability of the tobacco to fill a cigarette tube. For a given hardness of cigarette, more tobacco of lower filling power is required than less tobacco of greater filling power.
The more manipulation of the tobacco which occurs, the greater is the degradation of the tobacco. In the prior art tobacco feeding system discussed above, except in rare instances where all the cigarette-making machines are operational, the tobacco ultimately used in the cigarette-making machines is of variable quality below that of the original tobacco due to the degradation of the tobacco on recycle and the varying quantity of tobacco involved in such recycle.
Another prior art system of tobacco feeding uses a conveyor belt arranged with a steep incline upwardly from a hopper to carry a broad band of tobacco on the conveyor belt. A paddle wheel is arranged adjacent the inclined conveyor to return tobacco above a predetermined quantity to the hopper, so that again there is recycling of tobacco and hence degradation of the tobacco. At the top of the incline the tobacco is allowed to fall and then abruptly changes direction and is simultaneously split into separate feeds for a plurality of cigarette-making machines. The abrupt change in direction of the tobacco and splitting the tobacco into a plurality of streams provides the opportunity for tobacco classification, since the shorts tend to accumulate adjacent the belt. Uneven tobacco quality thereby results.